


Wrong cards

by WanderingBandurria



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dark Magic, Gen or Pre-Slash, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magical Realism, Musician Sirius Black, Mystery, Other, Unsettling, wishes coming true in the wrong way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28852470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingBandurria/pseuds/WanderingBandurria
Summary: Sirius finds an old book in his home that talks about wishes coming true. But it never talked about how that would happen.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Wrong cards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pixelated](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixelated/gifts).



> Hello! So - this fic was inspired in the song Heaven or las Vegas, by the Cocteau Twins, sent as inspiration/recommendation by Pixelated. Thank you so much for it! I really liked exploring this universe and images, and I would have never come with an idea like this one just on my own.  
> As always, thanks to my beta, LikeABellThroughTheNight. You are amazing sweetie.  
> Still, English is not my first language so if you spot any mistake, please let me know about it in the comments! I love learning more about English!  
> This is a weird fic. Please consider that it plays with spookiness, but it's generally very mild and gen rated. It was thought as an eventual Remus/Sirius but is very, very open-ended, so it can be read as you want!  
> I hope you enjoy this if you give it a chance!  
> Note 22/1/2021: The amazing [Mlim8](https://mlim8.tumblr.com/) (here's her [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mlim8/pseuds/mlim8)) made [some amazing art](https://mlim8.tumblr.com/post/639949910161129472/cocteau-twins-heaven-or-las-vegas) for this fic!!! Thank you so, so much!! Please go and check it and give it some love because her work is amazing!!

“I want to have better parents,” was the first thing Sirius wished, feeling absolutely silly, as he burnt the piece of paper with the words and sigils written on them in the middle of the night. 

Two weeks later, he was at the door of the Potter’s after being thrown out of his home by his parents.

_I should have specified that I wanted Regulus to have those parents too,_ he found himself thinking bitterly in the middle of the night while trying to sleep in a bed that wasn’t _his. No_ , he scolded himself, angry, what he should have done was _not_ mess with stupid shit he found in an old book, and then believe it had any impact in his life.

Because it didn’t. It was all an odd coincidence. 

And still… he should have thrown the book away, instead of hiding it with a couple of pictures of his family under his new bed, in his new house, with his new family. He felt like a traitor for weeks, until slowly, he started forgetting that the book was there. He forgot where the unsettling feeling came from. 

And with time, he even forgot to feel guilty, confused, and like shadows and monsters lurked in his heart. 

\---

Life wasn’t going as he expected. He had the looks, he had the voice, he (sort of) had the skills on the guitar. He had the contacts - but he didn’t want to use them -, he had the support… what else did he need to succeed in the music industry? 

And still, here Sirius was, playing in the middle of the street, his guitar case on the floor, people passing by without giving him a second glance, tossing coins like he was a monkey instead of stopping and properly listening to him. The assholes didn’t even pay attention to his music - not to his lyrics, full of metaphors, not to his voice carrying all the emotions. Sirius had fucking talent, but fucking _suits_ and tourists kept acting like he was invisible.

Whatever. He still needed the coins, so fuck them, he thought, closing his eyes and focusing on the music. He just needed to stay there a couple more hours to have enough money to survive one more week. It’s not that he didn’t have other sources of income - private classes for posh kids with the dream of being superstars, pub gigs with people chatting idly and clapping politely, one of those projects of James' to make music for TV that paid _incredibly_ well but came every other four months -, but he had decided to make a living from music, and that came with a price of hard work and little pay most of the time. Still, he wasn’t giving up, and since things were a bit tight this month, he had been forced to go back to being a _street musician._ It was alright - he didn’t mind much, he could do this, it was okay…

He opened his eyes and scanned the small crowd around him lazily. Two old ladies, a couple of youths. A man with intense brown eyes and brown skin and brown hair, and an ugly olive green shirt, and the oddest marks around his arms.

But those eyes. It was like they came from another time in Sirius’ life - but one he couldn’t remember. 

He moved through his set barely thinking. Those eyes - the man stood during the whole set, and Sirius smiled between songs, not daring to actually stop and talk with the audience. Not yet, too soon, he needed to get a grip of himself. He could feel, more than see, how the crowd around him thickened. People were clapping harder after every song, and some kids had their phones out. He didn’t care - brown eyes kept looking at him. 

The man looked almost sad, almost ethereal, almost smiling, almost crying.

It was the oddest expression - or lack of it - that Sirus had ever seen on someone’s face.

With the last chords fading away, his eye-contact with the man was suddenly interrupted by a group of tourists moving in front of him, cameras in hand, taking picture after picture of him. Sirius blinked, and looked around, surprised at the number of people looking at him, clapping happily. 

His guitar case was full of bills. And the man was gone.

\---

“I want to see that man again,” Sirius said as he finished painting the last symbols on the yellowing paper, his heart beating fast against his ribs. 

He felt like he was going crazy - he couldn’t stop thinking about that man, about those eyes. And he wasn’t one to get obsessed over strangers, he knew perfectly well how weird this whole thing was. So, stripped out of options after weeks of restless dreams full of brown eyes and weird half-smiles, his mind had come with one solution: taking the old, dusty book from his storage unit, where he kept all the things he didn’t want to think about.

It wouldn’t work, probably. It was a ridiculous ritual made for gullible people, for people desperate for an easy fix. _Last time_ had only been a coincidence. It was obvious that he had been ready to leave his family, given his wish. It was obvious they had already been too broken. It hadn’t been the ritual that made the wish come true: it was that having the wish, doing the ritual, was a sign of how much he had been pushing things in that direction.

He watched as the paper burned down, slowly, softly, in a small plate. The candles on the coffee table looked suddenly weird instead of silly, ominous instead of childish, as the flames faltered for a second, and as the last pieces of the paper turned into ashes, they went out.

Sirius’ heart beat fast, and in the dark of the room, his breathing sounded like that of a scared, wounded animal. The wind outside his flat whistled like an old omen, and the tree branches cracked like they were ready for the end of the world. The city lights cast shadows on his walls that seemed to move on their own accord.

“Hello, Sirius,” said a soft, gentle voice at his back. Sirius was frozen in place, and the steps of the man as he moved around the couch to come and sit on the chair in front of him sounded like old, crunching pages of a book. “I’ve been waiting for you to call me,” he said, with those brown eyes shining in the dark and a sad, sad smile on his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think? I really like this universe and would love to see what you people think could happen next! Lemme know in the comments if you have any ideas, would love to know what you guys think!  
> I'm on [Tumblr](https://wanderingbandurria.tumblr.com/) if you wanna say hi!


End file.
